The Afghanistan Papers, Part 3: Built to Fail
Bottom Line: Despite swearing off nation-building, the United States has committed billions of dollars in a largely ineffective and haphazard attempt to rebuild and reform Afghanistan.
Presidents Bush, Obama and Trump all swore that the United States would not get involved with nation-building in Afghanistan.
Still, since 2001 the United States "has spent more on nation-building in Afghanistan than in any country ever, allocating $133 billion for reconstruction, aid programs and the Afghan security forces. Adjusted for inflation, that is more than the United States spent in Western Europe with the Marshall Plan after World War II."
These nation-building efforts were characterized by "haphazard planning, misguided policies, [and] bureaucratic feuding," and have been largely unsuccessful. Afghanistan is still unstable, dysfunctional and corrupt, and relies on the United States for support, which U.S. officials predict will cost "billions more dollars in aid annually, for decades."
The Bush administration initially tried to cede nation-building to NATO and the United Nations, agreeing to train a small Afghan army, but not support it over time. But the Afghan ruling class was wary of the American, capitalist influence and pushed for a socialist approach instead. The United States didn't take this into account, and continued to push for an American style market democracy.
"When it came to economics, others said the United States too often treated Afghanistan like a theoretical case study and should have applied more common sense instead." For instance, the United States poured money into building new schools, even though there weren't enough students to fill them and no jobs for graduates. Afghan officials bemoaned in interviews that the United States emphasized free trade, since the country had nothing to export.
The United States ultimately created "a Third World version of Washington" in Kabul. This system "conflicted with Afghan tradition," which was much more tribal and decentralized. Condensing power in the presidency -- specifically in Karzai -- put the new government at odds with the Afghan people, and fostered corruption.
By 2009, U.S. officials had more or less acknowledged that we were nation-building in Afghanistan. They hoped Obama's counterinsurgency strategy would strengthen support for the Karzai government and "choke off support for the Taliban." But Obama had not allocated enough time for the counterinsurgency before scheduled troop withdrawals, and the Karzai government did not have much influence throughout the country.
In an attempt to offset these impediments, the Obama administration pushed for more spending on infrastructure and other development. One military official interviewed said that “Petraeus was hell-bent on throwing money at the problem." This wasn't the smartest strategy. "Amid the haste to spend, U.S. agencies wasted large sums of money on ghost projects that never took shape," including an $8 million industrial park that was never built.
This aimless spending was pushed forward by the Commanders’ Emergency Response Program, a Congressionally authorized program that allowed military commanders to "bypass normal contracting rules and spend up to $1 million on infrastructure projects," so long as each project cost less than $50,000. Congress eventually allotted $3.7 billion for CERP, which one NATO official called "a dark pit of endless money for anything with no accountability."
One emblematic CERP project was a $30,000 greenhouse which fell into disrepair after the Afghans struggled to maintain it. A U.S. military unit built a replacement greenhouse that worked much better for just $55. They were pressured to spend more.
Read the summaries of Part 1, Part 2, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6.
Access the full report here.
